No Political Voice, No Future Contribution to GTI Forum Farewell to the World Social Forum?
October 2019 No Political Voice, No Future Contribution to GTI Forum Farewell to the World Social Forum? Francine Mestrum So much has been said already about the World Social Forum, its past and its future, its successes and its failures. There is certainly no consensus about any of these. There is a past with many successes and some major failures. Whether there is a future will depend on what our objectives are. The world has changed since 2001, the year the WSF premiered. Looking back, while thinking of a possible future, I wonder if our major mistake has been that we have never clarified what exactly we wanted. “Another world is possible”—certainly, it still is, but for whom and from what perspective? It was an excellent slogan, but it allowed us to never say how “other,” how different, and in what way, that new world would be. As Roberto Savio says, the direct impetus for the WSF was an outcry against neoliberalism, structural adjustment, the austerity policies of the international organizations, and the financialization of the economy. There was still some hope that, ten years after the end of the Cold War, there was a possibility for peace, for better international relations, for global governance, for progress and development. In the early Forums, according to my research, the demands for real system change were, in fact, rare.1 There was very little talk of anti-capitalism, socialism, or revolutionary strategies. The radical alternatives discussed focused on social relations, participation, and a solidarity economy beyond markets. There was very little anti-globalization, but more alter-globalization with demands for a fair global order, based on the United Nations as opposed to the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.
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